The Final Hours of Half-Life
2 on GameSpot offers the promised behind-the-scenes epic look at development
of the highly anticipated shooter sequel, offering an incredible amount of
detail on the project, including the whole September 30 debacle:

So what
did happen? As Newell and the team have explained, by July it was obvious that
Half-Life 2 would not be finished in time for a September 30 release. So why was
Valve still telling the public in late August that the game was on schedule? "We
were paralyzed," Newell says. "We knew we weren't going to make the date we
promised, and that was going to be a huge fiasco and really embarrassing. But we
didn't have a new date to give people either." In other words, Newell didn't
want to announce the delay until he had a new official date to announce. It's
that simple. "So I decided we should just stay quiet," he says.

Still, there's a difference between staying quiet and confirming a ship date
that you know to be incorrect. Newell says that, in retrospect, he may have made
the wrong decision on this front. At the time, however, he didn't want to
announce the delay until he had something better to tell the fans. "I didn't
want to go to 'when it's done' or announce 17 different dates over the next few
months," he says.